Making Electoral Democracy Work

Research question/goal:

The project brings together a team of economists, political scientists, and psychologists from Canada, Europe, and the United States to undertake the most ambitious study ever undertaken on the impact of electoral rules on the functioning of democracy. The goal of the project is to develop a better understanding of how electoral rules shape the dynamic and reciprocal interaction between citizens and political parties. The project’s research will have profound implications for understanding the relationship between the rules governing elections and the quality of democracy. The study will provide the first comparative analysis of the impact of electoral rules on party strategies, the most comprehensive assessment of the role of strategic calculations and expressive benefits in the vote calculus, and the most wide-ranging assessment ever of the implications of differing electoral arrangements for the satisfaction that citizens feel with the functioning of electoral democracy.

There are three inter-related data sources. The first one involves an intensive analysis of party strategies in twenty elections in five different countries. Our innovative approach combines qualitative and quantitative methods to throw new light on how electoral rules influence party strategies and, hence, the options that are available to voters at election time. Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland have been chosen in order to maximize variation in electoral arrangements. The second component is a panel survey of voters in the same five countries. The same people will be interviewed in different elections at the national, sub-national, and supranational level. This will make it possible to determine how individual preferences interact with the salience and competitiveness of elections and electoral rules to shape electoral behaviour. The final component is a coordinated series of innovative experiments designed to complement the analyses of party strategies and the voter survey by explicating the underlying causal mechanisms. The Mannheim research team is responsible for the German data collection.

Current stage:

We completed the data collection efforts for this project. In addition, we worked on the book manuscript that draws together the results in terms of party strategies and voting behaviour in multilevel electoral systems. Moreover, we published two further research articles on turnout and strategic voting. In addition, we rewrote and submitted two more manuscripts that relate to negativity in campaigns and a field experiment with German MPs.

Conference Presentations

Gschwend, Thomas (2016): Strategic and Sincere Voting in Multi-level Systems. [6th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Brussels, June 23rd to June 25th, 2016]more

Indridason, Indridi H., and Thomas Gschwend (2015): Estimating Policy Perceptions of Party Influence on Coalition Policy Perceptions. [5th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Vienna, June 25th to June 27th, 2015]more

Gschwend, Thomas, Lukas Stötzer and Steffen Zittlau (2015): Valence Campaigning in the 2008 US Congressional Elections. [111th Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September 03rd to September 06th, 2015]more

Zittlau, Steffen (2015): Multi-level spatial voting: Vote switching in EP elections and European integration preferences. [5th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Vienna, June 25th to June 27th, 2015]more

Bowler, Shaun, Thomas Gschwend and Indridi H. Indridason (2014): Coalition Policy Perceptions. [4th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Edinburgh, June 19th to June 21st, 2014]more

Golder, Matt, Thomas Gschwend and Indridi H. Indridason (2014): Negative Campaigning in Multicandidate Primary Elections. [4th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Edinnburgh, June 19th to June 21st, 2014]more

Gschwend, Thomas, Lukas Stötzer and Steffen Zittlau (2014): Why don't you talk about policy? Valence campaigning in the 2008 US Congressional elections. [4th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Edinburgh, June 19th to June 21st, 2014]more

Blais, André, Ludovic Rheault, John Aldrich and Thomas Gschwend (2013): Understanding People's Choice When They Have Two Votes. [Annual Conference of the Canadian Political Science Association, University of Victoria, British Columbia, June 04th to June 06th, 2013]more

Gschwend, Thomas, Michael Meffert and Lukas Stötzer (2013): How Coalition Signals Influence Voting Behavior. [3rd Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Barcelona, June 20th to June 22nd, 2013]more

Golder, Matt, Thomas Gschwend and Indridi H. Indridason (2013): Negative Campaigning. [3rd Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Barcelona, June 20th to June 22nd, 2013]more

Bol, Damien, Thomas Zittel and Thomas Gschwend (2013): The impact of the Electoral Context on Personal Vote Strategies: A Field Experiment on German Legislators. [7th ECPR General Conference, Sciences Po, Bordeaux, September 04th to September 07th, 2013]more

(2012): Strategic Voting in Proportional Systems: The Case of Finland. [The Effects of District Magnitude, Lissabon, May 29th to May 30th, 2012]more